David Bell likes to write about families. Their intricacies and complexities. Their secrets. Their lies.
“Family is universal,” he says. “Everyone is in a family. Even if you’re estranged. Even if you never see them. Most people’s lives are not really that exciting — and most of the time our drama and conflict comes from family situations. A divorce. An affair. It’s all ripe material for writers.”
Particularly for thriller novelists.
That’s certainly the case in Bell’s 16th novel, Try Not to Breathe, in which family is at the heart. A pretty messy family, at that.
Just prior to when the story begins, a traumatic experience in the line of duty has forced 30-year-old Avery Rogers to abandon her law enforcement career, seeking refuge in a small college town where the most excitement she gets as a security guard is breaking up fights between drunken frat boys. It’s a far cry from the path her father — now a retired cop — expected her to take, and his disappointment is palpable. He doesn’t understand her trauma.
“As a society, we’ve become a little more enlightened about trauma, and we know that it’s sometimes going to limit people in terms of how they cope with it,” Bell says. “But Avery doesn’t cut herself any breaks, and she knows her father will never see her as anything more than a failure.”
She’s content — though not fulfilled — to break all ties with not only her dad, but her sisters as well. It’s easier to not disappoint them when she’s not even talking to them, right?
That is, until her father calls to say her half-sister Anna is missing and in danger. Anna likes to party, and Avery suspects her sister is just hanging out with friends. But her father’s insistence triggers Avery’s need to redeem herself, and perhaps earn back her father’s love and respect. She’s unable to say no.
As it turns out, Anna has a bone to pick with their father as well. She’s tired of his domineering presence in the house, and his cavalier attitude about human life while he was a cop. She plans to travel to Louisville and take part in a massive protest against police brutality — even if it means outing dear old Dad.
“When I was writing this book, there was a lot of discussion going on about the police shootings and the subsequent protests,” Bell says. “The Breonna Taylor case was front and center in Kentucky, and people were really talking about police brutality.”
This, of course, became one of the novel’s main talking points, but Bell taps into some additional, and perhaps more globally relatable, themes such as loss, secrets, and the often-impenetrable bond of family.
Avery does find her sister at the protest, briefly — but not before Anna receives a disturbing text that proves she’s being stalked. Now she’s running from both an older sister she doesn’t trust and someone who has been threatening her, watching her, for weeks.
She holes up in one of the state’s many cave systems — but she’s far from safe.
“In Kentucky, everywhere you go, there’s a cave,” Bell says, admitting that as per usual, the town in which Try Not to Breathe is set is fictional even if the geography and some of the other locations are not. “The state is also known for its marijuana cultivation — and caves are good places to cultivate that crop, even though medical marijuana isn’t even legal in Kentucky yet.”
The setting adds another layer of authenticity to Bell’s work, who also writes about “police life” with the confidence of someone who has lived it. He hasn’t, but like all good fiction writers, he does his research and fact-checks with those in the know — such as his neighbor.
“Whenever I have questions about what the police would or wouldn’t do, I ask him,” Bell says. “And inevitably we talk and he has stories about something he witnessed during his time as a police officer. More than anything, I’ve just been fascinated by crime and mystery and what bad guys will do, but my neighbor, for instance, has a certain way of looking at the world because of his past profession. For instance, he thinks about how there will be guys he arrested 30 years ago getting out of jail soon — are they going to hold a grudge and come looking for him?”
A chilling premise for another book, perhaps. But before that, Bell is laser-focused on two new projects. A young adult novel tentatively called The Midnight Driving Club is about a town in which teenagers are banned from driving until they get out of high school. It’s a rule the kids somewhat begrudgingly follow, until a new teen comes to town and starts a driving club in which the kids are enticed to “drive vintage cars, listen to 70s music, and get in all kinds of trouble.”
Bell’s next adult thriller will take place in a building in which those trapped inside it will be forced to survive not only a hurricane bearing down on them, but also a killer on the loose.
Thankfully, there’s a lot to look forward to from Bell after you turn the final gripping page of Try Not to Breathe.